All appears to go well until Grub time. I used the stage1 method.
For the record, Win 2k system info reports my cpu as:
x86 Family 6 Model 2 Stepping 1 AuthenticAMD ~656 Mhz

1st install, I tried using the option to compile so it would only work on my machine. When booting, Missing Operating System was the failure message.

2nd install, I tried optimized for Athlon, but will work on any x86 machine.
After the boot menu displays, neither my Windows or Gentoo would boot. I was able to manually load the bzImage from grub. After that, the machine seemed to lock up. I could manually get Win 2k Pro to start loading, but then would freeze. I guessed this might have been a 1024 cylinder issue.

After I installed Windows, I was wondering about my "wisdom" of placing the boot partition first. Of course, I didn't realize Grub didn't care about the 1024 issue.

I'm not confident with the kernel setup. Also, I didn't come up with anything to enter into the /etc/modules.autoload file. I've got an SMC adapter, but didn't see it listed. Later on, I THINK it was recognized as either an SMSC epic/100 or something called mii.

At one point, I get this message (paraphrased) epic/100 83c170 at 0xde00 IRQ 11

Another time, I see this:
epic/100 12292 (size) (unused)
mii 1040 [epic100]

I don't have a printer, so I get to write down the instructions. From my notes, here's what I think I had in my menu.lst file. Right now, Gentoo isn't loaded since I redid my partitions.

IT WORKS!!! I have no clue why. I looked at the page, but it was a bit over my head (without spending ALOT of time on it).
I looked for mii-diag and tried insmod, but there are no .o files. Just for the heck of it, I rebuilt the kernel and included support
for another card (SMC EtherPower II I think it was). Rebooted, still didn't work. Then, I looked at a line in /etc/conf.d/net I'd
been thinking about. I had this entry:

dhcpcd_eth0="...".

I remarked it out (I had unremarked it before) and after rebooting, the network came up. What makes this interesting part is,
I thought I had unremarked it earlier because the network wasn't coming up.

I'm going to call this thread done. Now on to security and the user environment.